Monday 21 February 2011

Quote of 2011

Quote of the year:

"There is no school for publishers, but he understood who the reader was, and he wanted us to be as honest with them as possible. It was not so much about making money as serving the community well."

Murray Thomson, 82, former St. Catharines Standard managing editor, talking about his former boss, Henry Burgoyne, who died from cancer recently at 61.

Burgoyne was the last of the family-owned daily newspaper publishers in Ontario when he sold the newspaper to Southam in 1996. The family bought the paper for a dollar in 1892. 

Family, friends and former colleagues attended a celebration of life for Burgoyne on Saturday.

"When he gave me the job in 1980, he said there would be a fence around the newsroom," Thomson says in an affectionate J-Source.ca story by John Nicol. "He didn't want us to be influenced by advertisers or the powerful."

Amen to that philosophy.

1 comment:

  1. Early 90's, the fence was still up. That was a great place to work, though the pneumatic tubes sucked.

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